Exclusive: Watch the Lyric Video for Dee Snider's 'Tomorrow Is No Concern'

Snider's "For the Love of Metal" album is due in July.

Dee Snider considers “Tomorrow Is No Concern” to be “the perfect lead track” from his upcoming solo album, For the Love of Metal.

“It really speaks volumes about my mental state,” the former Twisted Sister frontman tells Billboard. “I’d rather show you something I’m working on today that hasn’t sold a single copy than talk to you about something I did decades ago that sold tens of millions. I’m proud of that, but I gave you yesterday. It’s about living in the moment for this day, ’cause that’s what counts. Tomorrow is no concern.”

And Snider is rightly excited about the impending arrival of For the Love of Metal on July 27 through Napalm Records. The 12-song set is the result of a Snider appearance on The Jasta Show podcast, during which Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta “challenged me to make a true metal record, and I said, ‘I’m down.’ Then I said, ‘Who’s producing?’ [Jasta] said, ‘I’ll produce it.’ Then I said, ‘Y’know, I’m studied in writing ’80s-style rock. Who’s writing?’ He said, ‘Everybody’s going to want to write on this record,’ and from that podcast and that challenge, it literally grew into this amazing thing. I’m stunned. I still can’t believe it.”

As Jasta predicted, the metal ranks turned out to support Snider, with material coming from members of Lamb of God, Arch Enemy, Kingdom of Sorrow, Toxic Holocaust and former Killswitch Engage singer Howard Jones, as well as Jasta. Jones and Arch Enemy’s Alissa White-Gluz also make guest appearances on “The Hardest Way” and “Dead Hearts (Love Thy Enemy),” respectively.

Billboard is exclusively premiering the lyric video for “Tomorrow Is No Concern” today. Watch it below:

For the Love of Metal’s songs, and Jasta’s production, hit harder than Snider’s other solo efforts -- particularly 2016’s We Are the Ones -- but he had no trouble getting himself into metal god mode for the project.

“It’s my default mode, really,” says Snider. “I’m not faking it. It fit. And writing-wise, I’m a big fan of contemporary metal music. I really enjoy it, and Jamey made a real effort to pick things that on every level -- lyrically, musically -- would be a fit for me. He really did an amazing job producing this record, and I was able to sell the message and put passion into the songs because I believed in them.”

The album’s material ranges from defiant, “We’re Not Gonna Take It”-style anthems to “I’m Ready,” a song Jasta wrote about the death of Snider’s mother, Marguerite, who died Jan. 2 as the result of injuries sustained in a November 2017 car accident, along with some social and political commentary. The latter particularly surfaces on “American Made,” a kind of call for unity from Snider. As a former Celebrity Apprentice contestant, Snider has a connection to President Donald Trump that tempers his viewpoint.

“Yeah, it’s hard to be optimistic,” acknowledges Snider, “but there’s a bigger picture here. What really upsets me is the way it seems we’ve split into sides. Even in my own family, there’s incredible separation. Christmas was not fun, fun, fun. But I got hope when I was watching the [Winter] Olympics, and it occurred to me there was no separate section for the Republicans and the Democrats; we were all chanting, ‘U.S.A.! U.S.A.!’ It reminded me we’re all family -- a dysfunctional family, but I think there’s some kind of hope that we can stand together on some ground. In the end, we're all Americans. Right now, this is the hand we’re dealt, and I think we’ve got to deal with it and give it a chance.”

Snider has an idea for relating to Trump, too:

“Every now and then, he does something that’s kind of cool,” he notes. “Maybe if we cheer more for that, he’ll do more of those things.”

Meanwhile, Snider has plenty of cool things on his own plate. He’ll be playing a few summer shows and is eyeballing a possible tour later in the year. He has sold a new animated children’s show to Netflix -- no title or other details are available yet, but Snider says he set out to create a children’s show “that parents won’t want to kill themselves watching,” with what he promises will be “really good music.” His production company also has a few movies in the pipeline that he’s producing and developing.

As for Twisted Sister, the band firmly remains in the rearview mirror after having performed its farewell shows in 2016. “I have painted myself into a corner with my talk about bands and their retirement tours,” says Snider. “I do feel strongly about it. If you announce the retirement, if you sell the T-shirt [that says], ‘No More Tours,’ if you charge a premium for the farewell show, if you lead us down that path, it’s not cool to reverse direction and say, ‘I changed my mind.’ It’s not cool. So if Twisted was to come back and come out of retirement, I’d embarrass myself, so, no, it won’t happen.”